Satisfied At Last (Mythology Erotic Romance): Part Twelve of the Erotic Adventures of Heraklea (2 page)

She was on fucking Mount Olympus, again.

Klea stood, brushed herself off, and said nothing.

“Tell me, darling,” Hera was saying, “How many tasks did the king say there were?”

“Twelve,” he said. He didn’t really seem to be paying attention, instead looking off somewhere to the left, as if watching something else.

“How many did she do?”

“Eleven,” he said. Klea got the sense that he wasn’t hearing any of these questions for the first time.

“So there’s still one left,” she said.

No one responded.

Klea knew what a losing battle sounded like, but that didn’t stop her. “He won’t even notice,” she said. “He’s busy. His mind is elsewhere.”

“A deal’s a deal,” Hera said. She leaned forward and smiled nastily. “Better get back there.”

Klea turned and looked at Zeus, who seemed to have mostly checked out. She cleared her throat, and he finally looked at her.

“Just do the last one, dear,” he said. “Then you’re free to go.”

“I hear some of the whorehouses in Carthage are hiring,” Hera said. “Plenty of sailors to go around there.”

“Better that than married to someone who fucks everyone but me,” Klea said.

Hera’s eyes narrowed.

“At least I don’t approach all my problems cunt-first,” she said.

“If it works, it works,” Klea said.

“That’ll do,” said Zeus, and he snapped his fingers. Klea found herself on the side of the road, standing next to her horse, the sun just barely easing over the horizon.

“All right, buddy,” she said. “Back home, I guess.”

She’d kept the pace to a nice trot on the way over but on the way back, she let the horse mosey along as it liked, nibbling at the grass on the edge of the road, taking long breaks to admire the sunrise and watch the farmers get to work.

The guards at the gate said nothing as she went through, and the stable boy, if he thought anything was weird, didn’t seem to notice that she was returning a horse an at hour when most of the palace wasn’t even awake. Not even dirty, she went to sit in her quarters and wait for the king to summon her.

It didn’t take long.
 

As soon as the messenger showed up she knew where to go and followed along, behind him, unhappy. The Athenian contingent wasn’t there yet — she’d at least have heard about that many people arriving at the palace — but now that she knew that it was imminent, she saw the signs everywhere. Servants cleaning frantically, up in the chandeliers and balconies, places that normally got cleaned once a year. People coming into and out of the kitchens with enormous butchered pigs, peacocks, bushels of wheat, baskets full of ripe fruit.

And then the king, in the grand hall though few others were there. He wasn’t holding court that day, not yet, not until later. As she entered he was deep in conversation with an older man, standing next to him with a long list, and when she approached, he looked up.

“Hello,” he said.
 

“Hi,” she said.

He raised one eyebrow.

“Hi, your majesty,” she said.

He seemed to understand that this was the best he was going to get, and accepted it.

“I need you to get Cerberus,” he said.

Klea’s brow furrowed. She was pretty sure she’d heard wrong.

“Get what?” she said.

“Cerberus,” he said again. “Three headed dog. Guards the underworld.”

Klea opened her mouth. Then she closed it. Then she opened it.

“That’s, uh,” she said. “He’s in the underworld.”

“Please figure it out,” the king said, turning back to the man with the list. “I’m very busy. Big things afoot.”

The guard who’d brought her in rounded on her and stood between Klea and the king, indicating that this audience was very much over, and walked her toward the door.

“The entrance is in Laconia,” the king suddenly shouted after them. “You know, to the underworld.” Then the doors shut behind them.

Maybe I can just stay there,
Klea thought.

She left right away. Laconia wasn’t so far, and she just wanted to get out of the palace as soon as possible. Klea wasn’t sure what she’d do when she was done — she’d been considering asking if she could stay, but he was marrying someone else, that was off for sure — but right now she was thinking of being a monster-killer-for-hire.

Not that she’d killed a lot of monsters yet. She’d mostly fucked them, but that was a minor detail.

Klea spent the night at an inn and then, the next morning, asked if the innkeeper knew where the entrance to the underworld was.

He frowned. “Why you need to know?” he said.

It took all Klea’s willpower not to roll her eyes. “I’m on an errand from the king,” she said. “It’s complicated.”

“Dangerous place for a nice young thing like you.”

“I’m not that nice,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Just tell me,” she said, exasperated.

Five minutes later she was on her way, looking for a windmill in a wheat field near two brown horses, after which she would turn left at the old stone wall and then look for the rocky outcropping. Then, the man had said, she’d “figure it out from there.”

She made it to the outcropping, tied up the horse, went around the back of it, and immediately understood what the innkeeper had meant. There was a massive opening — a doorway, really — that shimmered with some sort of dark, magnetic energy. Klea took a deep breath and stuck her hand through. The air inside felt cold and almost like liquid, but made her hand tingle.

She pulled it out, making a face. She couldn’t see a thing beyond the blackness.

Then she just stepped through. The outer layer of her skin tingled and then went slightly numb, even though it wasn’t that cold inside the cave. No colder than a regular cave. There was just enough gray light, though she couldn’t see where it was coming from, that she found her way through the narrow, rocky passages. The light always seemed to be coming from above as she went down and down into the earth, but it had no source.

Finally, she came to a river, the same inky, depthless black as the door to the underworld. She knew where she was, the Styx, which she had to cross to get in, with the ferryman, Charon. There he was, standing tall, mostly skeletal, perfectly still and just waiting. Klea swallowed and walked over.

“Hi,” she said. She was positive it was exactly the wrong thing to say to a guardian of the underworld, but hell if she knew how to address him. “Is this where I board?”

That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said
, she thought.

Charon leaned down from his height and she saw that under his hood, his face was skeletal, completely expressionless. Her heart pounded in her chest, and for a few moments, she was afraid that he would just throw her into the river with all the other bad souls that tried to pull something on him.

For long moments, neither of them moved.

Then she realized his hand was out.

Of course
, she thought, and dug in her coin belt. She pulled one out and put it in his hand.

Charon turned around and walked to the front of his rowboat. It didn’t rock at all when he walked, only when Klea boarded and sat in the middle, utterly mindful of going over the edge.

The crossing was surprisingly uneventful. She got off the other side without the dark ferryman ever saying a word to her, and continued down the oddly lit path.

Slowly, she became aware that the air around her seemed thick, almost foggy and she could nearly make out shapes in the fog. Faces maybe.

The dead
, she thought, and a shiver went down her spine. To distract herself, she tried to think of how she’d get the dog. She couldn’t fuck Cerberus himself, of course, but surely he had some sort of trainer who could be convinced. Maybe even Hades himself, along with Persephone, his kidnapped wife. They were down here in the dark all the time, they probably got up to some kinky shit.

Abruptly, she went around a corner and suddenly there was an entrance to a huge cave, filled with half-light and dead trees and clearly visible souls, floating around, moaning. At the entrance sat a huge bulldog with the three heads, dead asleep.

Obviously that was Cerberus, but he didn’t really seem as dangerous as she’d heard. She took a step closer, and then another step, and then another. When she was about a foot away, all three heads finally woke up, and the strange dog stretched, shook himself, and then licked her ankle.

“Good boy,” said Klea, reflexively, and then something hit her on the back of the head and she was out.

When she came to, she was sitting in a straight-backed chair, hands tied behind her, in front of two thrones. The scene looked familiar, but instead of the light-drenched marble halls of Olympus, everything was black and purple, the strange sourceless light glowing everywhere, the walls and recesses of the room lost in the darkness.

“You,” said a booming voice, issuing from the man in the chair on the left, “Are not permitted here.” He watched her with deep-set coal-black eyes, set around with a network of fine lines, his near-black hair swept straight back over his head. He looked tired, Klea thought, a little surprised that Hades, god of the underworld, would look like that. Thin, too, though he grasped the arms of his throne with his long white hands very much in the same way his brother Zeus did.

Klea looked from him to his wife and back. He wasn’t much, but she was: long, deep red hair that set off the near-translucence of her skin. Ruby red lips and dark eyes, a beautiful dark dress made of feathers, bosom prominently displayed.

She thought about burying her face in Persephone’s bosom.
God, I bet I could make her scream
, she thought.

“You have nothing to say?”

She cleared her throat and stopped thinking about Persephone’s tits.

“I am here on a mission from Zeus,” she said. It was true-ish.

Both of them raised their eyebrows in unison.

“He has sent me to claim Cerberus in the name of King Eurystheus of Rhodes.”

They looked at each other. This was where, in Klea’s experience, someone usually said,
well, what will you do for me
, and then a few minutes later everyone was naked in a sweaty, orgasmic pile. An anticipatory tingle began between her legs, and she tried not to look too excited.

“For how long?” Persephone asked.

Hades looked at her sharply.

“I’m not really sure,” Klea said. “Couple weeks maybe?” Her task hadn’t been to take him permanently, she reasoned. She could perfectly well give him to the king for a while and then take him home.

“He’s guarding the underworld,” Hades said in a low voice to his wife.

“Is he?” she said. “He seems to mostly be napping by the door.”

“He’s very frightening.”

“He’s depressed, dear,” she said. “Let him go with this nice lady, he’ll get some sunshine and exercise.” There was a long, significant pause. “The underworld is for dead people. Everyone else needs to be let out once in a while.”

They stared at each other, and Klea distinctly felt as though she was intruding on a much bigger argument.

“We can’t just let everyone in.”

“She got in, didn’t she? Right past him.”

Hades glowered.

“He shat in my slipper this morning. He’s depressed. He needs to get out.” Her white fingers drummed on the armrest of her throne.

“We can talk about this later,” Hades said, and turned to Klea. “Two weeks,” he said.

Klea blinked in surprise. It was that easy?

“Okay,” she said.

Hades whistled, and then everyone in the throne room waited. And waited. Finally, Cerberus came walking in, all three heads drooping.

“Do you know where his leash is?” Hades asked Persephone.

“Why is that my job?” she said.

A day later, Klea and Cerberus, who had perked up almost immediately upon his return to the surface, stood by the gates to the palace, waiting for the procession from Athens to go through them. So far, it had taken at least ten minutes, and Klea had to pee. She supposed that the Athens delegation was trying to be impressive.

As she watched, a palanquin made its way slowly up the column, carried by four burly men, its sides all well-covered with hanging curtains. As it approached, Klea saw one eye peeking out, and she saw just a sliver of face: gold decorations in the hair, smoky kohl all around the eye. One hand, decked out in rings. All in all, she thought, the person inside couldn’t be more than sixteen, and then it dawned on her: that was the Athenian princess.

Klea stood on her tiptoes, trying to get a better view, but the girl was gone, ensconced back inside her box.

I’d like a palanquin
, Klea thought to herself.
I just could just stop it anywhere and have my way with one of the bearers inside it. No one would ever know
.
It would be like a walking sex box.

She liked the idea very much.

Klea skipped the ceremonies welcoming the Athenians to Rhodes, telling the messenger the king sent to get her that she had diarrhea. She was just beginning to go into detail when the man turned green and ran off, so instead of listening to some bullshit speeches and ceremonies, she packed her things in preparation to leave the palace.

Then, well into the night, two guards knocked on her door.

“King’s chambers,” one said, and Klea could tell from his tone of voice that they’d been ordered to get her there no matter what.

“I’ll come quietly,” she said.

She could have sworn one of them half-smiled at that.

In the king’s chambers, he lounged on a sofa, Cerberus napping on his back on a massive cushion, all three heads snoring in unison. He was in more disarray than Klea had ever seen him: his hair was slightly mussed, his clothes a little less than perfectly pressed. He was leaning back on the sofa, actually looking comfortable, instead of having the usual stick up his ass.

She wondered when the right to bring up the whole “You followed me and watched me have sex,” thing would be.

“I didn’t see you during the welcome ceremonies,” he began. One of Cerberus’ hind legs twitched.

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Is that so?” the king said, mildly. “Feeling better now?”